Trouble in Paradise

Twenty-Three

When Macklin came in the front door, Faye jumped into his arms and wrapped her legs around his waist. She was wearing a silk robe and nothing else.

“Whoa,” Macklin said. “Let me at least get the door closed.”

He held her easily.

With her face a half inch from his Faye said, “Welcome home. Wanna fuck?”

“Well, yes,” Macklin said, “as a matter of fact I do.”

She pressed her mouth against his and held it there while he carried her to the bedroom and put her on the bed. She held on even after he put her down.

“Faye,” he said as he pulled away from her. “I need to get my clothes off.”

“Well, be quick about it,” Faye said as she untied her robe.

She was very inventive and experimental. She liked to try different positions. Whenever she heard of a new sexual trick or an innovative device, she was eager to try it. There was something joyous in her sexuality. Macklin always thought of her as laughing while they had sex, though he knew she didn’t really. When they were through, they lay together on her bed and stared at their reflection in the mirrored ceiling.

“That calm you down for a while?” Macklin said.

“For a while,” Faye said. “You hungry?”

“For crissake, Faye,” Macklin said. “One appetite at a time. Let me sort of rest up.”

“I’ve got supper ready whenever you want it.”

“You serve a nice hors d’ouevre,” Macklin said.

“You get the people you want?”

“Yeah, Crow was the most important one. Now I got JD for wiring, and Fran for explosives, and Freddie Costa for the boat.”

“That means a five-way split,” Faye said.

“Unless some of them drop out,” Macklin said.

Faye met his eyes in the mirrored ceiling.

“You think that could happen?”

Macklin smiled and shrugged at her. “Could,” he said.

Still looking at him in the ceiling, Faye said, “You’re a heartless bastard, Jimmy.”

“Not all the time,” Macklin said and patted her thigh.

“No,” Faye said. “Not all the time.”

She put her head against his shoulder, and they were quiet together. Faye knew that it wasn’t quite right, what he’d said about “not all the time.” He loved her, within his limits, but Jimmy wasn’t capable of a lot of feeling. What he could feel most sharply, she knew, was excitement and boredom, and his life was mostly seeking one to avoid the other. It was why jail was so hard on him. She knew that she didn’t know what he did to fight boredom in jail, but she knew Jimmy and what excited him was risk. She knew that the odds were good that he’d risk too much someday. And, she knew that he would be unfaithful. It had nothing in his emotional world to do with loving her or not. It had to do with opportunity and conquest. She hated knowing it, but she was a woman who had learned early in life that things were so whether she wanted them to be so or not. And she knew that she loved him and that he would never leave her, and she would take what there was and make as much of it as she could. Looking up at the two of them lying naked on her bed, Faye thought that probably that was what life was, taking what you could get and making the most of it.

“What’s for supper?” Macklin said.

“Pork and pepper stew,” Faye said. “And I made a big pitcher of sangria.”

“Faye,” Macklin said, “you’re the best.”

Faye knew he meant it, even if he couldn’t say she was the only.

“Yes,” Faye said. “I am.”